Alright… first attempt at an extremely simple set-up. This is using bbegin’s image on the Raspberry Pi board with Attract Mode. My goal is to use a cheap single board computer for the guts of these cabs - no PC, no Windows, etc. - but still get benefits of full MAME (no Retropie nonsense!). One button on/off, boot straight to game list, simple menu that’s easy to navigate, no chance of screwing something up.
I might make a separate post somewhere because I need some help getting it to behave exactly like I want but I am pretty impressed with myself after a few hours.
Some issues I need to sort out:
1. One button on/off. I have seen YouTube videos of this and it looks simple enough to wire a button to the GPIO pins and type in some commands from the command line to set it up but it is unclear to me if this is a Retropie thing or separate. Seems like everyone on the planet loves Retropie - I think it is way too bloated - so it is hard to find information that doesn't involve Retropie.
2. The Attract Mode theme is confusing up/down and left/right. Intuitively you want to scroll left/right but you have to hit up/down to move through the games in the list. There is a "Controls" setting in Attract Mode but I haven't messed around with it yet. For example, "Up" is set to "keyboard up or joy0up" and I think I would need to change this to "keyboard left or joy1left" but I'm a little wary of screwing things up. I assume changing these settings in Attract Mode does not carry over to MAME...
3. [SOLVED!]ESC will exit out of a game but if it is pressed a second time it exits Attract Mode effectively shutting things down. Not good at all. I need to figure out how to Exit a game. [In Attract Mode you hit Tab-> Controls-> Back-> Default-> and change this to an empty field]
4. Along with #3, I really want to figure out how to set up one button for Pause and Exit. Hyperspin does this easily but not sure if it is doable in Attract Mode. Basically, I want to have a button that you press for pause but press and hold for 2-3 seconds to exit back to the game list. This way a player cannot accidentally exit out of a game. Anyone got any ideas?
I think that's it and I'll be all set on the hardware/software side of things. I may end up paring down the game list - 57 games is a lot to scroll through. Also, if I can add Tapper and Tetris and get them to look nice in the menu even though they are horizontal I probably will.